Dumb of the Week: Now we’re eating pets?

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

It takes a special brand of dumb to make it into this column. Today’s topic reaches a whole new level in the stratosphere.

The Sept. 10 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris contained several fiery moments, but one of Trump’s claims brought the world to its knees. With ridicule.

“They’re eating the dogs,” Trump said. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

The preposterous assertion was enough to send Harris into a laughing fit; and, except for Trump’s sycophantic followers, the rest of the world joined her. It even outshined this doozy of a line by Trump later in the debate: “I got involved with the Taliban.”

But where did this weird claim originate? As with many of the conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and his gang of MAGAts, the origins are murky.

Trump’s running mate JD Vance tweeted about the claims the day before the debate, remarking that the Haitian community in the Springfield, Ohio area has “caused a lot of problems,” adding that constituents have told him that animals were “disappearing.” Vance wrote, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

The usual actors picked up the claims Sept. 9 and blasted them all over social media. Rep. Jim Jordan posted a cringey AI-generated photo of Trump wading through water “saving” a goose and a kitten (which Jordan’s House Judiciary GOP Twitter account mislabeled as a “duck”). Wannabe edgelord Elon Musk also posted several memes about it, as well as the insufferable Sen. Ted Cruz and others. 

It’s impossible to tell exactly where Vance and Trump got this nonsense in the first place. Some news outlets point to a Springfield resident claiming to be a social media influencer who testified at a City Council meeting on Aug. 27, urging the government to “do something,” and making unsubstantiated allegations that Haitian immigrants were capturing ducks in a local park and eating them. 

The story was destined to fade away, but Trump brought it up at the presidential debate.

Even after moderator David Muir fact-checked him, telling Trump that the Springfield city manager confirmed there was “no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Trump doubled down.

“The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food,” he shouted. “So maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager. … But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.”

Ooookay. What are the people on television saying now, Donald?

While many news outlets have called out the downright insanity of Trump’s claims, they seem to have fallen short of calling these attacks what they are, which is blatantly racist and xenophobic. Par for the course, I suppose.

The posts by Trump and his followers have gained tens of millions of views and yet again distracted us from important issues people actually care about.

It wouldn’t be so bad if so many millions of people didn’t believe — and spread — every bloviation that comes from Trump. But they do. They spread it just like the lies that schools put out litter boxes for “furry” children, or that women abort or “execute” babies after they are born, or that people have to flush their toilets 10 times instead of once, or that injecting oneself with bleach will help cure COVID-19, or that the 2020 election was “stolen,” or that windmill noises cause cancer, or that Barack Obama was born in Kenya… on and on it goes. Needless to say, it’s one lie after another that Trump feels the American people are too stupid to fact-check.

We are in the dumbest timeline, where, as George Orwell wrote, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go eat a hamster.